Correspondent Blog

Yesterday, Treasuries easily handled a slightly-hotter-than-expected CPI release as a jump in coronavirus  cases contrasted with a more upbeat scenario on Wednesday. This morning, the other first-tier report of the week is getting its due as January retail sales were just released. Coming on the heels of an upbeat December sales report, January was expected…

The build or buy decision should be a constant question in most bank’s decision making, and unfortunately, most banks default to the “buy.” In some cases, this is appropriate, but in many, it is not. In this article, we look at the two major overriding reasons of why your bank may want to hire and…

Fed Chair Powell’s first of two days on Capitol Hill went mostly as expected. He characterized the economy as “in a very good place,” but also noted that some impact from the spreading coronavirus on the economy is inevitable. He did say the Fed is watching the virus’ impact to judge if it becomes persistent…

We are working with numerous community bankers to develop strategies for instituting floors on commercial loans. The idea of protecting floating or adjustable rate assets is not new to community bankers, but the current interest in this concept is spurred by specific and unusual communications and market developments that are worth analyzing. In this blog,…

This week will provide a potpourri of Fed speak, retail spending and inflation numbers, along with industrial  production and consumer sentiment. Top billing this week goes to Fed Chair Jerome Powell who travels to Capitol Hill for his semi-annual Congressional testimony. He’ll begin tomorrow in front of the House Financial Services Committee and on Wednesday…

The January jobs report beat expectations but not strong enough to move the Fed off the pause button (think Goldilocks).   Job gains totaled 225,000 in January versus 165,000 expected and 147,000 the prior month. The pop in job growth was a nice surprise after two straight months with gains well below 200,000 and below the…

Beginning in May 2012 we started tracking  portfolio trends of our bond accounting customers here at the Correspondent Division of CenterState Bank.  At present, we account for over 141 client portfolios with a combined book value of $10.03 billion, or $71 million on average per portfolio.  Twelve months earlier the average portfolio size was also…

The last two days have proven one thing and that is the political season is fully upon us, and the ebb and flow of the race will  have a direct impact on trading direction and momentum. The juxtaposition between the chaos of the Democratic Party’s Iowa coming out party and President Trump’s State of the…

Government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) have been lending to borrowers for many decades.  The Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) have popular multifamily lending programs so much so that they now control the bulk of the market. For example, Freddie Mac’s total multifamily finance activity for 2018 was $77.5B, and…

Since you probably spent time today discussing the Super Bowl ads (Smaht Pahk, Google, and Snickers were our favorites), we wanted to highlight an all-too-common bank marketing mistake that many make. It can be argued that despite its high price, Super Bowl advertising is one of the best deals in marketing as you are assured…

This week is full of first-tier economic releases but coronavirus headlines will continue to drive market trading more than anything else. Businesses started reacting last week to the spread of the virus and it stands to reason continued moves and developments lay in store this week as well. An economic impact to China is obvious…

In a surprise to no one, the Fed left the fed funds rate unchanged today but did tweak the Interest on Excess Reserves higher by 5bps from 1.55% to 1.60%. The tweak was forced on the Fed as the effective fed funds rate was trading at 1.55%, uncomfortably close to the lower bound of the…